IRJET- Application of Mobile Technologies to Enhance the Teaching and Learning Ambiance

International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395-0056
Volume: 06 Issue: 10 | Oct 2019 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072
© 2019, IRJET | Impact Factor value: 7.34 | ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal | Page 1370
Application of Mobile Technologies to Enhance the Teaching and
Learning Ambiance
Kaylin Khanal
Student, Computer Science and Engineering, Uttarakhand Technical University, India
------------------------------------------------------------------------***-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abstract:- Push notifications, hardware vibrations and
features to work offline are some of the reasons why most
of the people opt for the mobile application instead of the
web-based application. Apprehending a solution to the
underlying situation, the research work presented in this
paper demonstrates the use of React Native to build a
cross-platform hybrid mobile application “Senzen app”,
capable of purveying solutions of the requirements to
strengthen the teaching and learning ambiance of an
institution. The positive response from both android and
iOS users reflects the app's success in achieving all the
initial plans. Some of the major highlights of the
application are to send messages, state-based push-
notifications regarding the appointments, assignment
deadlines, event alerts, etc. which aids to establish a
network between the teachers and the students with a
social networking application kind of look and feel.
Keywords: React Native, Django, hybrid app, Cross-
platform, Redux.
1. INTRODUCTION
In mobile development, the competition has been a two-
horse race between iOS and Android. So, we can’t really
neglect one of these platforms while developing our
applications, given that we are uncertain about the
platforms that our end-users will be using [1]. But it
might be a tedious task for a developer to develop and
implement features twice using a completely different
programming methodology while developing or
maintaining the two applications running on two
different platforms [2]. This was probably the main
reason to opt for a hybrid cross-platform application for
this project.
Cross-platform mobile application development, despite
requiring a developer to be acquainted with more than
one native platform [1], will not require the developer to
code separately across those platforms [3]. Some
popular mobile applications such as Instagram,
Facebook, Pinterest, etc. are cross-platform, all
developed with React Native. React Native, developed by
Facebook in 2015, after the popularity of ReactJs [4], is a
JavaScript framework for writing natively rendering
mobile applications for iOS and Android [5].
This paper presents if the choice of React Native as a
framework is worth investing or not, the performance of
the app and mainly whether or not it was able to
strengthen the network among the group of students
and teachers as planned.
2. MOBILE TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION
Due to a greater level of mobility and portability, mobile
devices have an upper hand over desktop PCs and other
gadgets in terms of day to day usage. Students and
teachers are likely to carry their mobile devices every
day and everywhere. It’s also because of its small
dimensions, relatively long working time and
communication abilities [6].
After conducting a round of questionnaires and surveys
in my university (Uttarakhand Technical University,
Dehradun, 2019), among 60 students 30 teachers, the
following results were obtained as depicted in the charts
below.
Fig 1. Gadget choice of teachers and students when
checking college notices/mails/assignments
So, most of the students in my college were found to be
using mobile gadgets to send or receive academic mails
or notices. It is obvious that mobile devices, small
enough to fit in a pocket or in the palm of one’s hand, is
the most used gadget in comparison [7].
Another survey was conducted to check the availability
of gadgets among all of those people. Following results
were obtained:

Fig 2. Percentage of students and teachers having three
major gadgets: laptops, smartphones or tabs
So most of the students had a smartphone, whether iOS
phones or androids. This result showed that the
development of mobile applications could target and
facilitate the majority of the users. As there were several
people who owned an iOS phone or android or both, it
was necessary for the application to be cross-platform.
For this purpose, the plan was to develop a hybrid app
capable of running on both platforms.
3. OVERVIEW OF THE APP ‘SENZEN’
It’s great if a teacher can send notifications to all the
students about him being absent on that day or if he
could create and assign a meeting schedule, invite the
faculties of his choices and send notifications about the
meeting remainder to those selected groups. Senzen
does more or less the same. It displays the messages,
pdfs or images in senders’ and recipients’ side stacked in
a searchable place. There’s a pdf/image upload option in
Senzen, which would allow teachers to send or receive
assignments from any particular students, teachers can
send mobile push notifications to the students reminding
the final deadline of submission. These push
notifications can also be sent to students reminding
them of their library book submission deadline, pending
fees submission deadline and many more.
In addition to this, the main highlight of the application
is to be able to view the analytics and performance of the
students or compare the stats of any two students based
on their academic performances, or assignments report.
There is a teacher analytics section where teachers’
progressive charts based on the grades of his/her
students past 4 years are displayed. So, the app
concerned with performance tracking as well.
Teachers or admins can post or edit notices whereas
students can only view them. All the students will get a
push notification if the teacher opts to do so when he
posts any notices. There is a voting feature in which
students can vote for teacher of the year and vice versa.
All other basic features found in social media sites such
as editing private information, changing profile pictures,
etc. are available within the application. A teacher can
add his subjects and also assign a day to day attendance
to each student. Students can send notification to
teachers along with the message stating the reason why
he/she will be absent that day.
3.1 Senzen modules
Incorporating the requirements of a simple, fast and
deployable application, the app was developed with
extreme planning. It can be divided into four major
modules as follows:
 Login and Register module:
It is the first screen displayed on the first install before a
user is logged in. Both login and registering process
utilizes token-based authentication. Redux is used for
state management. One can register only once using the
same pre-recorded email id which they have provided to
the college.
Fig 3. Login and Register Screen

Fig 4. Register Module flowchart
Fig 5. API Response during login
Based on the user-type response, the user is navigated to
the teacher or student’s dashboard.
 Analytics
Fig 6. Choosing the analytics category for the students
such as GPA, assignment scores, attendance over
semesters and many more
Fig 7. Displaying analytical progressive reports of
students over past semesters and comparing the result
of one student over the other
The analytical progress report will facilitate each student
to realize their academics compared to that of others and
also will motivate them to figure out the areas for
improvement. A student can select to view his
performance analytics based on his attendance, grades,
assignment scores etc.

React-native-charts-wrapper library is used to display
most of the charts.
Dashboard Module
Fig 8. Teacher Dashboard
Student dashboard or teacher dashboard looks very
much the same. They land on this module when they are
logged in.
 Sharing Files and Messages
Fig 9. Assigning tasks or sending academic materials to
the students
This is probably the most important feature to be able to
exchange lecture notes and pdfs via the application.
 Push Notifications
Fig 10. Sending push notifications about any meeting or
events
Similarly, various other notification alerts along with
messages can be sent to teachers as well as students.
Fig 11. Notification and message sent to the student
These state-based push notifications were sent with
Dijango-push-notification. For state management, Redux
is used.

 Other basic modules
These modules cover other functionalities such as
editing profile information, updating profile pictures, etc.
Also, teachers can add their subjects or maintain the
attendance record of the students from the application.
Fig 12. Teachers Subject module to add their subject lists
Fig 13. Maintaining the attendance record of a student.
Teachers have provisions to select the absent students
and assign attendance to all the other present students
or to navigate through student’s subject lists and
assigning attendance to the students.
3.2 Development Phases:
The implementation of software systems where the
same codebase needs to be run on several
heterogeneous platforms and demands special
techniques and precautions. The reasons for being a
large number of different APIs change in operating
systems and hardware [2]. Hence, the development
phases for the hybrid applications must be preplanned
to ensure the development is heading in the right
direction. Undergoing several phases as listed below,
Senzen was developed to be a fully functioning
application:
3.2.1 Research and survey:
Prior to the development, a round of questionnaire was
conducted with students as well as teachers to know
their gadget and platform preference, and also about
what functionalities they most expected from such an
application. Understanding the requirements, it was
necessary to know about the current trends in the hybrid
application development and whether to invest in a web-
based application or a hybrid mobile application. So the
choice made from this stage was to select Django as
backend and React-Native as mobile frontend
technology.
3.2.2 Wire-framing
The next stage included the sketching and determining
what features are to be built first and what features must
be left for the future updates. The decision made from
this stage was to create a custom user model and to
design backend based on the proposed ER model in the
first place and then adding other features one at a time
in the next.
3.3.3 Technical Feasibility Assessment:
This phase included understanding all the pragmatic
approach during the software design. It was vital to
understand the scope of the project, what technologies
need to be adapted keeping the time-bound, security and
compatibility of different technologies in mind. It was
found that Django, Django REST Framework and React
Native were compatible, secure and completely feasible
for the development of the planned application.
3.3.4 Prototype:
A simple prototype of the frontend was sketched using
UI/UX tools to realize the look and feel of the future
project.
3.3.5 Development and Testing Phase:
In mobile app development, we need to test early and
often. The initial tests for both Django and React Native
was by writing Unit tests. A component test is done to
React Native with ReactTestUtils. The final testing
conducted was integration followed by Functional
testing. The development phase of a hybrid application
takes lesser time than the native application [8].

3.3.6 Deployment
The backend REST API is deployed and hosted to
PythonAnywhere.
4. Problem Statement
The teacher's and students' networks and interactions
must not be limited to the classroom. It’s vital for the
students to realize their weak areas and it’s equally
important for the teachers to assist and respond to their
queries of the students outside of the classroom as well.
It won’t be possible to conduct individual doubt clearing
sessions with each and every student when they meet in
the classroom. But with the inclusion of mobile
technology, sharing classroom notes, messages
discussions, etc. will help a lot to teachers as well as
students. Senzen does more or less the same. By
providing progress analysis of teachers and students
each semester, they can either get motivated or can
realize the room for improvements. Other features such
as notification alerts if the teacher is absent on that day
or notification for pending dues etc. will help students
plan their schedule a lot easier. Hence, Senzen provides
social media kind of look and feel with the primary goal
of assisting in the pedagogy system and strengthening
the teaching-learning ambiance.
5. Related Technologies and Research
Some of the famous mobile applications like Facebook,
Airbnb, and Instagram, etc. are built using react-native.
Hence, hybrid technology has proven in the big market
as well. This paper presents the use of React Native in
education and there is quite a few research done in this
field with the inclusion of mobile technology.
Palcher et al. [9] conducted research in mobile learning
and presented the application of using mobile devices in
education. Fojtik et al. [7] conducted research on the
impact that modern mobile technologies are bringing in
the field of education.
6. Future Works:
This is an initial version of Senzen. There is a saying that
no software application is ever complete. There are
many other pragmatic features that can be added in the
future. In addition to this, the scope of the project can be
expanded to other fields such as hospitals, offices, and
organizations as well in the future.
Some of the plausible future updates may include:
 Classroom messages and discussions
 Integrating payment gateways
 Classroom video lectures streaming via the
application.
7. Results and Discussions
The application development was a success not only
because of it's successful built but also of all the
responses it has received. The Android apk version of
the application before install is 20.2 Mb, which didn’t
exceed the expectation.
Native applications tend to provide better performance,
responsive and fluid experience to its user without any
delays than hybrid platform applications [8]. However,
the performance of Senzen was outstanding and no one
could identify it not being a native application. It’s will
soon be brought to commercial use, targeting more
colleges and institutions, adding more features and
hosting the application to the app store(iOS) and the play
store(Android).
REFERENCES
[1] Kassinen, O., Harjula, E., Koskela, T., Ylianttila, M.: ‘Guidelines for the implementation of cross-platform mobile
middleware’ International Journal of Software Engineering and Its Applications vol 4, no 3, 2010.
[2] Bishop and N. Horspool, ‘Cross-Platform Development: Software That Lasts’, Computer, IEEE Computer Society, vol. 39,
issue 10, pp 26-35. , Oct. 2006
[3] Bernard Kohan and Joseph Montanez, “A comparison of native app development (iPhone: Objective-C / Swift, Android:
Java) vs hybrid / PhoneGap app development (HTML5, CSS, JavaScript)”, Comentum, 2015
[4] Cory Gackenheimer. ‘Introduction to React’ Apress, Chap. What Is React?’ pp 1–20, 2015.
[5] Zammetti, Frank ‘React Native: A Gentle Introduction: Build Two Full Projects and One Full Game using React’ Native,
2018.
[6] Fojtik, R., Ha, H.: ‘Mobile technologies and distance education.’ Proceedings of E-Learning Conference. Gent, pp 27-32,
2005.

[7] Fojtik, Rostislav ‘Mobile Technologies Education’, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol 143, August 2014.
[8] Anmol Khandeparkar, Rashmi Gupta, and B. Sindhya. ‘An Introduction to Hybrid Platform Mobile Application
Development’. In: International Journal of Computer Applications vol 118, no15, 2015.
[9] Pachler, N., Cook, J., Bachmair, B.: Mobile Learning, Springer, 2010.

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